Older Games Are Better. Discuss.

OK, I'm pretty sure we've done an article quite like this a while back, but, hey, this kind of stuff is what I'm (not) paid for, so...

Alex, Nometet and I were having a discussion recently and we came to the unanimous conclusion that, while there is no way games are actually getting worse, they do seem to have once been...well...better. Genre classics, such as Half-Life 2 - still going strong after five years, Age of Empires, oh I don't know, let's say II, and Grand Theft Auto : Vice City. Are all old. Even the most played game in the world, World Of Warcraft, is nearing its fifth birthday. The third most played PC game of 2008 was, according to an ELSB survey was 2003's Halo 2. So what is it about these games which endears us to them, and gives them that edge over their newer, "better" rivals?

A key point here, that critics will raise immediately is "Newer games have better graphics". So what? Does having amazing visuals make a film any good? (Pearl Harbour, anyone?).  Arguably (and I do mean it in its most literal sense) Tetris is one of the best games of all time and has that better graphics than Crysis? I think not. Games do not need to blow up your graphics card (in PCs, at least) to make them brilliant. Look carefully at the charts. What sells more, The Sims or its sequel? As long as there are 12 year old girls in the world playing on their mother's laptop that she bought at a "computing fair" in 1998, The Sims will always outclass its bigger sister, not because of its graphics, but because it is so simple.

A point that Nometet put in when he wrote an article similar to this, is that what made the older games better is that they were original. To quote him,

Let’s take Mario as an example. He started as a respectable Italian plumber saving a princess from an evil gorilla/dragon (Donkey Kong or Bowser, take your pick) by traveling through pipes in the Mushroom kingdom. Alright, it sounds like the makers were on LSD at the time, but it was original, it caught on, and everyone enjoyed it because it was different. Now, many years into the future, Mario is playing tennis and football with his arch-enemies and laughing with him, while the princess runs around looking cute and smashing people with her umbrella.

I think this attitude, while maybe having some grounds, is not quite right. For if people felt that these "original" characters had been oversold, they would not have bought the newer games. But they did. Especially as the Mario series, since starting in 1984 has sold 201 million copies - the highest of any game series ever. EVER. The same story goes for Nintendo's brilliant Pokemon series, which spawned, it must be said, a legend for those of a certain generation. Who hasn't heard of, or doesn't recognise Pikachu?

Do you recognise this Pokemon?

And Pokemon is STILL popular with people of a certain age even though Pokemons Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Silver, Gold, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl and Platinum have been made - and that's just the normal RPG ones. They are the SECOND highest selling video game series of all time. And they ALL have awful graphics, a rather silly, non-existent plot and have recently become confusing - to me at least, but then, being of a (slightly) older generation I am only comfortable with 151 Pokemon, not 650. But then that's just me.

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